Lam Ngai Kai

Lam Ngai Kai (藍乃才), a.k.a. Nam Lai Choi, Nam Nai Choi, Simon Nam (born 1953), is a Hong Kong-based cinematographer and film director. In the West he is mainly known for his overtly violent movie Story of Ricky.

Lam joined the Shaw Brothers studio at a young age as a junior worker. Years later he was promoted to the camera department as focus puller. From that position he moved up to become a cinematographer. As a cinematographer he worked with a number of renowned directors, mainly with Sun Chung with whom he worked on films such as The Drug Connection (1976), Big Bad Sis (1976), The Proud Youth (1978) or The Avenging Eagle (1978). Lam worked as a cinematographer for seven years and was regarded as one of the best of his trade at the Shaw Brothers studio. Despite the encouragement of the studio, as well as the persuasion of such landmark talent as Tsui Hark and Sammo Hung, Lam has refused to become a director until star actor Danny Lee invited him to co-direct One Way Only (1981), which became the first directorial work for each of them.

Lam’s first film as solo director was the modernistic crime drama Brothers from the Walled City (1982), which he followed with an even more refined and progressive urban thriller Men from the Gutter (1983), both produced by Shaw Brothers. Even though Lam is not mentioned as one of the directors of the Hong Kong New Wave of the turn of the 70’s and 80’s, these two films display an identical approach to the films of say Dennis Yu or Johnny Mak. The only difference is that Lam was not an auteur in the classical sense, meaning he was the director and cinematographer of the films, but not the author of the script. Nevertheless, Brothers from the Walled City and Men from the Gutter, just like the contemporary New Wave films, combine popular genres with personal drama, their characters and conflicts are grounded in the everyday social reality of Hong Kong and they were filmed on actual locations, not just in a studio.

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